Dutch international Thomas Rongen – whose footballing career is a product of his hometown club AFC Amsterdam – was appointed the new TFC Academy director prior to the start of this season. I recently caught up with Rongen right after TFC Academy’s senior squad outplayed London City at Downsview Park, beating London by a whopping score of 6-0 in Canadian Soccer League play. Rongen (who played in the United States from 1979 to 1993) discussed with me Toronto FC’s vision of bringing over the Ajax youth system, the 4-3-3 and the possibility of Dutch Total Football working in Toronto.

Djuradj Vujcic: Mr. Rongen, first of all, congratulations on the big victory. I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised because I know a lot of these guys from London City and a lot of them played at a pretty high level in Europe. Do you think that, with all the effort, money and time put into TFC Academy, we can expect more wins like this? Are you surprised as well?

Thomas Rongen: No, I’m not and I feel that we’re only scratching the surface. Actually, I think that some of our younger teams are even better than our senior team. Saying that, we’re playing against good competition in the CSL.

We’ve changed the make-up of the team a little bit. It’s more of an under-23 team as we’ve got some 20 and 21-year-old players that help our younger talented players more. You know, gradually. We should actually be 3-0 in league play. We lost last weekend, we should have won that game as well so I feel that this team will finally be able to compete not only against this team here (London) but against the better teams of the CSL’s first division just like our under-17 team will compete for first place in their division. It’s just a by-product I think of good coaching, the continuation of believing in our vision, playing the 4-3-3, playing attacking, aggressive technical football – which I think we displayed today. We scored some goals, we scored more goals, we were dominant and we were a better technical team.

I think fitness was an issue too for the opponent. Again, our training of four times a week helps us in games and it’s going to help us in tight games as well. Overall, I’m very pleased by the performance and we’re only going to get better. Sergio Camargo is still injured, Tyler Pasher wasn’t part of this team today due to suspension so as I said, we’ll be adding better players even in the future. That’s going to make this team better but to me it’s more about how we approach the game, how we play the game, how we manage the game and at the end of the day, are there one or two players out here that eventually can make the jump to our first team.

That’s really the exercise, for me, more than anything else, to be able to recommend to our first-team coaching staff as to which players are ready to make the jump. When we can surround these talented players with other talented players, you get good results. I think winning on this level is important and I think we’re clearly heading in the right direction – we’re far from being there but it’s a good start of the season for all of our teams.

Djuradj Vujcic: TFC Academy came out with a 4-3-3 today and clearly, it worked. Do you want to continue with the 4-3-3? Is the 4-3-3 something that you want to play against every team or does it depend on how the other team comes out of the gate?

Thomas Rongen: No, no, I think that – and it might sound cocky – but I feel that we will be the better team in most games and we’d like the other team to adjust to us without us making any adjustments.

With due diligence to getting scouting of our opponent, we’ll see how we do within the style that we play – if we need to tweak certain things – but overall, I think that the 4-3-3 for a variety of reasons is just the best tool to develop players and teams. A lot of coaches do team development which we do too. Within that, our main focus is individual development quite frankly and that’s what we need to do. If you look at the 4-3-3 and if you look all over the field, we have triangles. You encourage that really with the number 7, the number 11, the 9, the 10 and the 8. This way you have five players being creative.

Let’s take for example the 4-4-2: we have one big target forward, one number 10 that’s creative – wide guys. This (the 4-4-2) only encourages one or two – maybe three – guys to be very creative. In this system, we have five guys that we allow to express themselves – our wide guys, our 1 v 1 guys like Omari Morris who can get some goals, go on the outside and look to combine. It really forces your full-backs to play attacking football as well so just from a pure developmental standpoint, I think it’s the ideal system to play for a 10-year-old but also for an 18-year-old. Most teams in the world, the big teams in the world – the big Barcelona, the big Real Madrid, the big Man United, everyone plays out of the 4-3-3.

The English national team (at times), Dutch national team, the Spanish national team, the German national team all play the 4-3-3. Nobody really – with the exception of middle to lower-division teams in most countries – still play out of the traditional 4-4-2. I think that with the 4-3-3, the change is the triangle in midfield – most teams play with two holders and one attacking midfielder while we play with two attacking and one holding midfielder.

Our first team for instance plays with Torsten Frings and let’s take Saturday’s game with Julian de Guzman as the two holders and Luis Silva (and/or Eric Avila) was the attacking midfielder so the first team plays with a triangle forwards and a triangle backwards. We play with two guys underneath the 9, one is the 10 and one is the 8. The 10 really being the most attacking and the 8 being a really late player, the 6 being the guy that moves his share of the balls and puts others in their positions. We’re teaching our players and we’re doing a pretty good job. We don’t need to be hung up on the 4-3-3 though.

Djuradj Vujcic: Do you mean a Total Football system could work in Toronto?

Thomas Rongen: I think a Total Football system makes sense as well. I think that aggressive, attacking, dominant and technical football is the way you want to play. You can play that also out of a 4-4-2 quite frankly but the 4-3-3, as I said, if you play with two attacking midfielders with just one holding midfielder, we are encouraging five players to express themselves, to be creative, to be quick thinkers and we hold them. We’re looking at centre-backs, full-backs and we hope that we can eventually get some real, real special players getting through to our first team. We’ve done a good job with defenders in Morgan, Henry and Stinson who’s also more of a defensive player. I want, in the next five years, I want to create two or three special attacking players who will join our first team.

In the Academy senior squad, we have players like Omari Morris and Michael Bilak that fit the 7 and 11 mode. Maybe we’re missing a bit of a traditional 9 like a Ryan Johnson from the first team. We got an injury with Kova (Mario Kovacevic). Mario Orestano, who scored our first goal today, is a classical number 10. Wags (Michael Wagenknecht) is a lead player, he’s our number 8, Chris Mannella (our captain) was our number 6 today. So to put names to numbers, you have specific qualities for players that understand playing within positions and the numbers of those positions, what the technical and tactical perimeters are based on the positions that these guys play.

Djuradj Vujcic: I know this question is kind of a long shot but I just have to ask it. Do you have anyone in mind that, as of now, is a potential first team candidate?

Thomas Rongen: It’s really way too early. If these kids are deserved of a contract or if they are way too premature – it’d be unfair to them and to our first team quite frankly to name names – only time will tell. I think that the first team did a good job this year bringing in about eight of our young players to Orlando. We felt that none of them were ready with the exception of Quillan (Roberts), the goalkeeper. We’ll do the same thing next year and bring in some young guys to pre-season and our first team coaching staff will determine if they’re good enough and our job is to prepare these players as best as we can and they can be successful if they can make that step to the first team based on their performances with the first team in pre-season, in a try-out situation more than anything else.

It’s a focus on team/club effort so hopefully in a few years, if our guys were to put on a jersey without any of our logos, people who watch us play will say: this is Toronto FC and they play dominant, aggressive, technical, attacking, winning football. I think that at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about.

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